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New York Times, New York Region, January 29, 2003, on line:

Accident Underscores Lack of Cellphone Tracking
By KEVIN FLYNN


City, state and federal elected officials said yesterday that the disappearance of four teenagers in a Bronx boating accident has underscored an intolerable delay in creating a tracking system to trace the location of emergency calls from cellphones in New York.

One of the teenagers placed a 12-second 911 call from his cellphone on Friday night as their boat sank in the icy waters off City Island. Police officials have said the operator mishandled the call by not relaying it to emergency units. But they have also said that the rescue crews were likely too far away to have arrived in time and that the call was too short and faint to pinpoint the boat's location.

United States Senator Charles E. Schumer was one of several officials who said that long-promised improvements to enable the 911 system to track cellphone calls might have provided critical information in quickly locating the boat. But whereas Mr. Schumer criticized state officials for the delays, other officials pointed fingers at federal regulators or the city.

Such sophisticated tracking systems are still rare around the country, experts said, but Houston and Rhode Island have the ability to trace cellphone calls to a specific longitude and latitude. New York City is about three years away from installing such a system, said Michael J. Farrell, the New York Police Department's deputy commissioner for strategic initiatives.

Senator Schumer and City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. said they were concerned that more than $162 million collected in surcharge fees from cellphone users in the state since 1991 had not been used to create a tracking system, as intended. They cited an audit by the state comptroller last year that said the state police, which receives the revenue from the surcharge fees, had spent much of the money on things like vehicle leases and winter boots.

In a response last year to the audit, state police officials said that the state law creating the surcharge never said it had to be used for wireless service, and that much of the money had been spent years ago, when technology for a tracking system was not even available.

"We have been doing this as quickly as possible," said Sgt. Glenn Miner, a state police spokesman.

United States Representatives Anthony D. Weiner and Joseph Crowley criticized the Federal Communication Commission, saying it had extended from 2001 to 2005 the deadline by which wireless providers were to make substantial progress in creating such a system.

"The tragedy," Representative Crowley said in a statement, "might have been averted if the cellphone providers stopped dragging their feet with the full compliance of the F.C.C."

State Senator Carl Kruger, a Brooklyn Democrat, said that city officials also bore some responsibility, in part because city dispatchers had mishandled the call and in part because the city had not, on its own accord, chosen to finance improvements to the system. Mr. Kruger said the city could have spent the $25 million now earmarked for a new 311 telephone system on the 911 upgrade instead.

City officials have said the 311 system will free the often overtaxed 911 system by giving people a place to report nonemergency incidents like noisy parties and open fire hydrants.

Police officials said that the city would soon be able to track the number of a cellphone from which a 911 call was placed, as well as the location of the cell site that first received the signal. But Mr. Farrell said the city was still several years away from installing a more sophisticated system, like that being used in Rhode Island. Such systems can pinpoint a call to within several hundred feet, experts said.

Police officials have cautioned that, even with such a system, it is not clear that rescuers would have reached the eight-foot fiberglass rowboat in time on Friday night. A person could have survived only about 15 minutes in the water, given the frigid water and air temperatures that night, police officials said. The closest rescue unit would have needed at least 20 minutes to arrive.

The families of two of the teenagers heard the tape of the 9:58 p.m. cellphone call yesterday at the 45th Precinct. According to a transcript of the call, one of the teenagers told the operator: "Hello...uh...we're...listen...we're on the Long Island Sound in a boat off the coast of City I...We're gonna die."

Afterward, Mel A. Sachs, a lawyer for the family of one of the teenagers, Andrew Melnikov, described it as "a desperate call for help." He said no decision had been made about legal action.

Internal police investigators recommended yesterday that the 911 supervisor in the case be disciplined for failing to follow proper procedures on relaying the call. No wrongdoing was found on the part of the operator who fielded the call and took it to the supervisor for advice, according to a senior police official. The official said that the operator and the supervisor had said in interviews that they did not think they could track the call because the sound quality was poor and they had not heard the caller's reference to City Island.

Eddie Rodriguez, the president of Local 1549, which represents city 911 workers, said it was "irresponsible and unfair to make judgments in public before the parties involved have been questioned and the investigation is completed."

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Originally posted by Clay Washington
Un-F***ing-Believeable

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Originally posted by Bulldog
Are they gonna sue god for making the water?????

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New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

911 bungler a rookie (nice objective headline there eh - got to set the tone early... )

By MICHELE McPHEE, RALPH R. ORTEGA and GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Wednesday, January 29th, 2003

The city 911 operator who bungled a desperate call for help from four teenage boys on a sinking rowboat was a rookie who admits she didn't know what to do, the Daily News has learned.
The operator has told people she could not hear 17-year-old Henry Badillo as he cried out his location over a cell phone in the waters off City Island on Friday night, a source said yesterday.

The operator said all she picked up was Henry saying they were "on the Long Island Sound."

She didn't hear him add that they were "in a boat off the coast of City I-," the source said, explaining that wind was howling into Henry's cell phone.

Seconds later, Henry screamed - "We're gonna die! - and the connection went dead.

The 911 operator had been on the job for a few months, sources said.

She said she repeatedly tried to type "Long Island Sound" into a 911 computer, but the system spat back: "No address for Long Island Sound."

Not knowing what to do, she turned to a more experienced supervisor.

Both logged the call - but did not alert police, delaying a search for nearly 14 hours.

"No conscientious person would receive a call for help and not do anything," seethed Henry's 45-year-old father, who shares his son's name. "Were they asleep in the control room? Were they drunk? To me, that would be the only explanation."

Henry's mother, Virginia, demanded: "I do want the person who did this ungodly decision to be held accountable."

The identities of the operator and her supervisor were being kept secret.

But the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau interviewed both yesterday - and police said disciplinary action was expected to be taken against the supervisor.

Police released a full transcript of the 911 call last night. A mother of one of the teens said it lasted 31 seconds, but there were only 12 seconds of conversation.

"Right after the kid said they were going to die, you could hear them hit the water," said a city official who heard the tape.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said the operator and her supervisor failed to follow new department procedures requiring all such water distress calls to be relayed to the NYPD harbor unit.

A police boat was anchored under the Triborough Bridge, 30 minutes from the waters off City Island. An air rescue unit could have flown a scuba team to the area in 20 minutes.

Still, even if an immediate rescue attempt was made, authorities said it is unlikely the boys would have been found alive in the dark, frigid water.

Trip to Hart Island

As the search for the boys continued yesterday, police took a group of their friends to Hart Island, where authorities believe the teens were heading on a stolen, 8-foot dinghy.

The boys and their friends had taken boats from City Island to Hart Island before to party and explore abandoned missile silos, sources said.

The families of two of the missing boys - Andrew Melinkov, 16, of Manhattan, and Carlo Wertenbaker, 16, of the Bronx - went to the 45th Precinct stationhouse yesterday to listen to the tape.

A description of the call from a lawyer for Andrew's father backs the operator's account.

Sources said the entire call can be made out when it is enhanced. They added that 911 operators have the capability to play back calls if they don't hear something clearly - but apparently this was not done.

- With Fernanda Santos

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